Dark Dragonkin is one of the first games that I have had the pleasure of redeeming from Lurkit. Being one of only 4 games that I was eligible to redeem, I poured all my hope into the one and only Lurkit games available to me that didn’t look like a mobile game port.
This description does, however, come with my personal acknowledgement that, as a brand, Lurkit is better than Keymailer in terms of interactivity and user engagement. However, on the other hand, for smaller channels like myself, in comparison to bigger streamers, have such a limited choice on Lurkit due to access to games being behind an “Avg Viewer” wall. On Keymailer I can walk up to any brand, developer, or publisher and slap a request on their game, believing that I compared to anyone else, will have a “good chance” of redeeming a game. Although this is the case, a lot of the time I will be “left on read” by the places I request from. Lurkit on the other hand, pretty much has a 100% chance of being accepted if I meet the criteria, if I can actually find anything I want to review in the small pool I’m limited to. Although I appreciate Lurkit’s approach to allowing developers to choose their audience, I find that, given my smaller size, I am severely disadvantaged and limited.
Dark Dragonkin is a weird little game, top down, JRPG-like game that’s more about solving room puzzles endlessly than any actual RPG features. You go room by room, level by level, using 4 different characters with 4 different abilities. You have the Tank character (who is assumably female, love that) who can kick boulders out of the way and smash things, and the ability to use her shield to block attacks. Not only that, but you have the ninja guy who is great for backstabbing people and can jump over large gaps. Next is the druid-type who has the ability to turn into a fairy and fly through cracks in the walls, also having the ability to heal your team. And lastly, you have the mage who shoots fireballs which can light torches and kill enemies as well.
As said before, there is not really much of a story to this game, there is a little starting story to give your characters reason to exist and reason to be doing what they’re doing, but that’s about it. From the start, what you do is go level by level, learning the mechanics of each individual and continue on through each dungeon. I did play this game for roughly 50 minutes, so I almost met my hour quota. It’s not unbearable. It’s a basic game with an interesting premise which I’ve seen similar things done before by Elmarion: the Lost Temple (but that was in 1st person, and you simultaneously controlled 4 characters with the numbers 1-4), and it’s not completely lost on me, it’s just a bit boring. It’s a puzzle game and there’s not much else to it. There’s no fear aspect, tension, excitement, or anything of that nature, it’s completely about solving puzzles in an RPG-like fantasy environment.
Pros:
The game works, and has no audio or visual bugs.
The game provides a unique and intriguing mechanic to managing 4 people at one time. Making solving puzzles more appealing due to having to control more than one element within the puzzle-dungeon.
All the mechanics of each character are explained to the player, on how to use them and when is best to use them. Not much room is left for mistakes made via the game being stingy with its hints.
Despite the game being simple, a few puzzles did stump me a few times, but that was partially down to me having trouble keeping track of who can do what.
Cons:
While the mechanic is interesting, there’s not much else that really draws the player to stay for a while. The games’ music is repetitive and monotonous, and the control of four players is limited to singular, slow movement. I’m aware that this is a puzzle game, and I can appreciate that, but it’s RPG styled, surely that warrants a bit of excitement?
The game is a little weird with the walking and placement of things. It would’ve been better if the movement was gridded, or on rails. Walking forward moves the character forward 1 square at a time, leaning towards a more move-based puzzle game. This is due to the difficulty of aiming things correctly, the rock being kicked 2 pixels too far, the fairy getting KO’ed because I couldn’t fit her in the hole… I could go on.
Looping back to uninteresting, the game is nothing to look at visually. The characters are nice enough and are unique looking, but looking at the game itself as a whole, it does nothing to maintain my interest visually either. There’s a lot of empty space, both in the map and the black void outside the map.
Price: £11.39 Time To Complete: N/A (The only entry is me LMAO) Achievements: 14 Cards: No Worth The Money: IMO, not really. It does have 80ish levels, but there is no way I could withstand the game for that long to get my money’s worth.
In conclusion, this game is something that I’d like to see more of, just with more “umphf” or however you spell it. It is an interesting concept to have a puzzle game like this use 4 different characters that you can control separately. But as much as they spent a lot of time on making an insane number of levels, I think more should’ve gone into making it a fun-er experience.
Zesty Rating 4 Out Of 10. There’s a hint of flavour, but it’s gone before I can enjoy it. A genuinely appealing concept for a game, let down by boring level design and no real excitement, tension, or fun really. It is a puzzle game, but due to the RPG skin, it’s misleading to those who think they’re here for an “adventure”.80+ levels of the same song on loop, barren hallways and the call of the black void behind the dungeon map.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again. Not only that, but being more Lurkit-focused in my new era of streaming.
NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
Another game from Keymailer, this time I was hoping for a good, fun experience, akin to PayDay 2 but a little more lax and a lot more goofy. While I can definitely say that this would’ve been the case if it weren’t for the fact that the game is only suited for multiplayer.
Now, I can’t blame a game for being bad, just because it is dead. There are certain things you just can’t control, nor can you do much about. There is an over-saturation on the market of multiplayer games. So much so that I doubt every single multiplayer game ever made is being played right now, a lot will have dropped out of relevancy and a lot will have never actually been picked up.
When it comes to Perfect Heist 2, I can’t reasonably say that “the reason that I didn’t get to experience this game fully is because there was no one playing at the time”. I was not monitoring the number of people playing the game that day. Looking back on the statistics of gameplay, however, it appears that it would’ve been extremely lucky for me to even consider catching anyone else playing due to the fact there were only 5 other people playing on that day. I could’ve, of course, just assumed that the “Quick Play” button wasn’t working and that’s not how other people were finding each other. That would, however, be rude of me to just assume nothing works, and it’s way more likely that I was just unlucky.
So, generally, what can I say about this game? I wish there was a legitimate Singleplayer mode. What I can do is set up a custom lobby and just fill it full of bots and see how things turn out, which was the majority of what I did when “playing” the game. The A.I. seems to just charge full force in with not a care in the world for anything, regardless of what level I set their difficulty to. This led to a few funny moments where the police officers were emptying full clips into the lifeless bodies of my former comrades over and over again until I was red in the face laughing, only feet away. There’s honestly not much else that I’d like to discuss in great detail, as I don’t think I can get the entire feel of this game without playing with other real people, as it’s intended to be.
Pros:
The game works, with no graphical errors or glitches (as far as I’m aware)
The art style of the game gives off a great vibe, while the styling lets you know that you’re getting into a serious situation (with the colour palette). The chunky, lower poly-count lets you know you’re in for a goof and a good bit of fun.
The amount of selectable characters in the game with different weaponry is refreshing and interesting. I’m sure it’s more than what PayDay has, you can really feel that you’re helping out the team in different ways with all these roles, which all have some things in common too.
The custom mode with bots is essentially what made this review, whoever had the idea to have this in the game needs a pat on the back. The A.I. may be very “special” but it provided countless good laughs.
The U.I. of the game is actually rather decent for an indie game, everything is clear and concise and nothing is obstructing the view of the player.
Cons:
The game does have a GPU issue on the main screen, which is quite weird. Forces my GPU to rise to around 90% only on the main screen, but everywhere else it’s at a reasonable level.
The game relies on the player having someone to play with for the game to function as designed, which in itself isn’t a major flaw. Considering the player-base it has, it fails to provide the desired feel of the game.
The A.I. for the game seems not to change when adding different level custom bots. The robbers, no matter the level, dash straight into the bank and start smashing glass and grabbing necklaces. The police gun down people immediately, even if it’s supposed to be easy. It may just be only damage scaling, which is fine, but I honestly don’t notice much of a difference there either.
When I picked a specific character (possibly called “infiltrator” or something) where you spawn inside the building. The police automatically shot at me, despite my character depicted as wearing the same outfit as the staff, and not holding anything threatening. Not only that, but when I died, my A.I. companions were nowhere to be seen, waiting for a bit, I then flipped the camera to discover they’d spawned outside the map, so that’s fun.
Price: £7.99 Time To Complete: None it’s multiplayer Achievements: 19 Cards: None Worth The Money: Honestly, even if you got a group of friends together to play it often… No, not really.
Overall, I wanted this to be a great game, and fundamentally this is an okay game, or a “more okay than the average shit I get from Keymailer” game. Everything works, a few glitches here and there, but its reliance on solely multiplayer is what lets it down greatly. A hollow version of Payday, which would’ve been super fun if there were other people to play it with.
Zesty Rating 5.5 Out Of 10. With no doubt, it would’ve been higher if I’d had access to a single player of sorts or found a lobby with people. A Payday parody/clone that could’ve been super fun to play, and funny with other people. Looking for a “Quick Game” finds no one, as there’s not many others playing this game at the moment. For a game that is designed to only be played multiplayer, it makes it a tad boring.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented. Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.
NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.
Apsulov: End of Gods was a game that I was really excited to play. It was one of the first games that I’d received from Keymailer that actually looked worth the price that it was. Looking like a finely polished, first-person adventure which had very different elements to it than previous games. It struck my interest and when I actually received the game, I was genuinely shocked and excited considering that the game was released in 2019.
You’re dropped into the game with a very cranky-ass GLADOS repairing you and shouting at you for being a failure. This part of the game sets up the basics, walking, movement in general and interacting with things. Not only that, but gives you the tone straight away. Lulling you into a false sense of security with being nice, and funny, and then literally screaming at you for being a failure for reasons you can’t understand as the player. (which genuinely triggered some fear for me, a bit of trauma, but we okay). From there you escape into vents, run, and get sucked into a giant, glow-y, magical butthole then transported to the Ashlands where you’re attacked by Demodogs, they eat your arm, but you’re then rescued.
The man who rescues you infuses you with a weird robot arm, which you can conveniently charge up with green ion cells lying around everywhere. With said arm, you can unlock doors using biosignatures which you’ve stolen from the hands of dead corpses. Not only that, but you can also use it to force push people and things, and that’s how you solve a lot of the travel-based obstacles.
Honestly, I couldn’t really tell you what the plot was. I have no idea if I just wasn’t listening, or if I’d zoned out because I was bored, or if it was actually given to me. In my head, all I had was “Zap, Zap, out of battery, refill battery, Zap, Ooo that looks cool, Zap.” Which is not an entirely bad thing.
The game tries to combine numerous things together, and as much as I enjoyed the game, I think that is its downfall. Once I stopped to breathe, or got tripped up on an obstacle I couldn’t solve it hit me, I don’t really know what’s going on. This game is supposed to be horror, but I, personally, don’t find it scary at all. There was only one good jumpscare/scary moment, but I forget what it was and where it was. The game also is supposed to be a mix between Sci-Fi and Viking themes. The humans within the game have “found Asgard” and therefore found items associated with the gods of that realm. Artefacts from the one that is known for raising undead, now there are undead everywhere. It’s a classic DOOM story, humans got too ballsy with their inventions, found Hell and were like “Yeah we could use Literal Hell to power our machines.” but instead it’s all the nasty Viking gods. After DOOM, looking at this game, you could replace the fact it’s Viking gods with anything at all, or take it out completely. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m more interested in why GLADOS is a dick because this robot thing is apparently sentient and really fucking pissed off at me for reasons I still don’t understand.
Pros:
The game works, no major graphical errors, bugs, or audio glitches.
The game looks absolutely stunning for being an indie game, and as visual quality goes, justifies the price of the game. It sets scenes amazingly and is not afraid to make things look grandiose, spectacular, and foreboding.
The use of colour in this game is also great, not in an atmospherical sense but from a game design perspective. You always know what something is due to the colour and the glow. The big purple horned monoliths are save points, the big green glowing items on the walls are cell refill stations.
All the controls are really intuitive and there’s no sense of mucking up what you’re doing. Everything is simple and to the point and is really “handy” when solving the puzzles.
The puzzles within the game are easy to spot, as always highlighted with light or made extremely obvious with a bright yellow valve or an obvious ladder you need to blast down to gain access.
Cons:
Despite wanting to be a horror game, the atmosphere just isn’t foreboding enough, and the enemies are not scary. There are no pivotal moments where you feel in imminent danger, apart from the cutscene where the demodogs are out to get you. Otherwise, the game is just dark corridors, boopy doors and the Iron Man gloves. The lack of fear this game supplied meant that things that I would usually find scary were just not doing it for me.
While it’s good that the exploring puzzles are easy and easy to find, so far, there is only finding the hand that opens a door, blasting a ladder down and blasting doors open. Otherwise, there is nothing else but exploring and picking up bits of dialogue from journal entries and other lore snippets.
I’m not sure what the game was really hoping to achieve. It mixes a lot of different cool elements that really catch your interest. I can’t help but feel as though it sounds like an unfinished thought, or a “what if…” statement that was expanded on but never solidified. As said before, it’s essentially DOOM, but instead of it being Hell that humans stupidly messed with, it’s Asgard and the world is at threat of the angry god people’s bad antics.
The story of the game, while convoluted, was also either barely present or easy enough for me to ignore. Generally, I was happy enough in this bliss of ignorance, happily zapping things, but when it came to puzzles that slowed me down, it dawned on me how empty the game felt.
Price: £15.49 Time To Complete: 5 Hours Achievements: 39 Cards: 7 Worth The Money: No, but yes on a discount, putting it under £10, maybe.
Overall, this is a stunning looking and feeling game, which creates a great awe-inspiring atmosphere well, but not a scary or spooky one. It has great mechanics used for environmental puzzles and opening up new areas to explore, but no other puzzles that vary enough to excite the brain. A very mixed review from me, but it’s genuinely a game that if I got around to, I would try to finish it. It has my interest, but not my heart.
In conclusion, this game would’ve been a better game if they’d been trying to rip off DOOM in a way. Taking the fast-paced action and combining it with the “I don’t really know what’s going on because things are going super fast, but I’m having fun” aspect combined with quick and easy puzzles. Throw in a few horror aspects to have the player fuelled not only with the energy of excitement, but the energy of “Oh shit, OH SHIT, AHH! AHHH!” with some horror elements.
Zesty Rating 6.5 Out Of 10. Stunning visually and gameplay wise, but the story is lacking just enough to make you feel something is missing. Interesting premise, but crams a little too much in, making everything feel a tad unfinished. Still a great game for mindless exploration of the fantastic environments created.
Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changed to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.
Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred.
I look forward to writing for you all again.
Another one of these games that I do not remember purchasing. However, Steam remembers it as September the 30th of 2019, and I will take its word for it. But, this is also another one of these games I will tell you to steer clear of, and this time it’s not because the game is bad.
So, here I was, probably on a shady website or browsing Fanatical Bundles. If I’d seen this game on its lonesome, outside a bundle, I would not have bought it. It came in the bundle regardless, and as part of my “I need to get through my massive backlog of games” effort on Twitch, I played it to give it a go.
About this time I was thinking, “Wow, this game cost £0.99, and it’s not bad.”
I’m zipping about in this simple, and minimalistic, but challenging, nonetheless, game, and it’s pretty damn good. Still not groundbreaking or amazing, but nothing like the other shovelware on Steam which they let pass through these days.
Low and behold, I don’t need to look very far, and I find that this game is an asset flip, complete and utter plagiarism. The developer of this game is claiming this game as his own when the rightful maker made this available on Unity.
There are pros and there are cons, but Abscond is not this developer’s game. So, there are only cons here, which are:
“Dev does not know how to make a game” / “Dev is too lazy to make a game by themselves.”
So, what do we do now? I’m downright refusing to acknowledge the “developer” as the creator of this game, and left with nothing to gripe about.
Things like this do leave me to be curious, however. If a “developer” on Steam, is willing to get free assets from Unity, not alter the game in ANY manor and attempt to sell it passing it off as their own… will they benefit?
As it stands, Steam charges the developer $100 per game put through the Steam Direct program, meaning that as soon as a developer puts it up, they are $100 down. Unless you have lots of expendable cash, it’s not money you’d get rid of without being completely certain that what you’re doing is worth it/profitable.
So, the developer, XiNFiNiTY Games, takes a free asset bundle and sells it on Steam without further modification. — $100. If you’re a nerd like me and have Augmented Steam and SteamDB browser extensions, you will be given some useful information, but I’ll touch on that in a second. Looking at the initial data of the game that the regular Steam user gets, you can see that the game only has 9 reviews despite it being “released” in December 2017. You’d possibly think to yourself, “Fuck, maybe it’s just because it’s an endless, simplistic little arcade game that’s not had a ton of spotlight.” Scrolling further down, you’ll see the usual thing of there being actually more than 9 reviews, there actually being 24, which is still not a great deal despite the game being released for 5 years.
The bigger majority of these reviews being negative, calling towards the simplicity of the game, low effort and not being worth the money being asked of it. A couple of others, including myself, using these points others had made along with the fact that the game is an asset flip to point out why it was so ridiculous that it was paid for.
24 is still a small number, but thanks to my add-ons, you get a rough estimate of how many people actually own this game.
Now, as you can probably tell already by looking at the picture. 20k to 50k is not really that much of an “accurate number”, nor is it really all that accurate at all. It’s quite the ballpark range.
Okay… So let’s outsource this a bit, and try a different thing to guess how many people own this game.
Oh…
So, we have the same numbers from SteamSpy, but some huge numbers from PlayTracker. And honestly, on first viewing of that number it seemed unreal and did not want it to be accurate. But concerning the number of reviews, and also looking at that third number (actually the first in the set, but the third that I mentioned), it looks a lot more realistic.
Therefore, on some basic maths, entirely ignoring a few factors such as Steam sales, discounts, and devs giving their keys away to bundle sites: If SteamSpy’s upper estimate is correct, and 50k copies have been sold, then you’d be right to assume that they’ve pocketed $44,900. Which would be absolutely ridiculous.
Even going by the “Owners By Reviews” lower estimate it would still mean that the “developer” made a net profit of $1340, which is still disturbing considering that this is not even their content.
So, looking a bit further into this game, on various blogs, I happened upon a very useful site, or maybe I found it useful as it provided me the information I wanted to see. (Rather than the news I wanted to hear).
A site known as Game-Stats that has a lot of information on games had something more in mind of what would’ve been earned by the so-called developer. Fair enough though, despite being a lot more realistic and what I’d had in mind, it was still unfortunately above the $100 they had to pay to release “their” game. Meaning, at the end of this (if this website’s more realistic looking evaluation of the revenue is correct) they still gained $70 from essentially stealing someone else’s work and slapping a different name on it.
Meaning, if anyone wants to almost double their money, just steal someone’s game and slap your name on it and pop it on Steam, they won’t do anything about it.(obvious sarcasm)
Hi, I’m not finished yet. So, this “developer” can yoink practically an asset pack from Unity, not change anything about it and claim it as their own, gaining almost double their money back.
What if this is not the only time they’ve done this? Or at least, that’s a question that I start to ask myself because I’m a weird one like that and apparently have too much spare time, despite never seeming to have any at all.
XiNFiNiTY Games have 22 games to their name, 6 of which being DLC (Downloadable Content), so we can bring that number down to 16. One of the first-ever games, of which being “Infinity Wings – Scout & Grunt” actually gathered enough reviews from people to generate an average audience score, which is not a good one. What the more early games of XiN have in common is that they’re not the sole publisher of the game, and that OtakuMaker SARL are the ones publishing instead. These games also still not getting great receptions, but looking and seeming to be more fully fledged games than the Abscond rip-off.
The first one that we actually take a look at is another game with a very similar thumbnail to Abscond (in fact, they all are very similar looking in terms of simplicity). Spinning Around is a basic game where you have to fly your Spaceship into the correct colour, while the colour position that you have to fly through changes. You’ve all seen someone playing a mobile game with this concept. This is another blatant rip-off, another asset bundle ripped from the Unity Asset store, a different title slapped onto it and published on steam as their own content. What is the net profit that site predicts this time? $320.
Okay, let’s try another one. Infinity Trip. Another unity asset flip, as the real developers can be seen right here. How much is their estimated return? $56. Okay, thank goodness, nearly everyone reviewing this one knew that it was an asset flip immediately. Must be a more popular asset bundle than the rest.
Stellar Warrior? Phone-game esque, so most likely also stolen. Net Revenue $0 (Seems improbable, yet there are no good reviews at all about this game).
Cubic Color? More than likely. (Can’t find original source). Net Rev $37.
Color Circle? No evidence as far as I can see, but it looks exactly like what they’d usually steal. Net Rev $75. *All “Net Revenue” are estimates made by the Game-Stats website.
So, from the asset flipping, player scamming side of things, we have 13 games that have possibly been attained from the unity asset store. All of which have been turned around, had a new name slapped on top of the old one and put on Steam to be sold as “their” game.
13 x $100 = $1300 So, the devs have spent this much putting the games on Steam, but did they get back what they spent? $75 + $37 + $130 + $260 + $18 + $94 + $0 + $110 + $56 + $340 + $56 + $320 + $170 When you look at it, there are plenty of small numbers that are below the $100 threshold, but a few big numbers. The gamble was really risky, as not a lot of their flips generated a profit, but the ones that did generate a profit only did so marginally in comparison to indie games that have any real effort.
Estimated Net Revenue for all (possible) asset flip games being $1,666. (*Gasp* 666) Provided they paid for each game to be put on Steam, they presumably made a $366 profit, assuming the website is more accurate than the others. This is not amazing, and taking a close look at their profits from each game, if Trigonometry hadn’t done as good as most of the others, they would not have as much of a profit as they do now.
Color Circle
But realistically speaking, however, what if this hadn’t stopped in 2018 and this developer kept selling asset flips? Also bringing to attention, these games are still live on the Steam store, waiting to be bought. This “developer” can still obtain money right now from any unsuspecting buyer. This slow gain of $366 has happened over the course of five years, acting like an offshore bank account or investing in a really slow-moving stock, but it’s still there.
You can probably guess my opinion on the matter. I find it morally unethical, and completely condemn this as while it’s still apparently legal, it’s harmful to the image of “indie”. Not only that, but it damages the reputation and the credibility in the eyes of players towards other games that use bought assets for their games, such as PUBG. Many indie game devs either do not have the skill, time, or the know-how to pursue making their own assets. Buying these asset bundles and game templates are what gives these developers a head start and a clear direction of where to improve from, or what to use, or how to use what they have. Unlike these innocent game devs who use these assets as intended, XiNFiNiTY take templates as they are, change nothing, and slap their name on it.
Call this whatever legal term you wish, forgery, plagiarism, theft. At the end of the day, it’s certainly a scam. You can get the tools to make these games for free, you get the templates for free (sometimes paid, but a lot XiNFiNiTY took were free or cheap), and “make” exactly what XiNFiNiTY copy and pasted yourself.
If you come across any games by XiNFiNiTY Games, then please do not add to their pool of money that should’ve been distributed to the real developers. There are many other better indie developers, and there are many other better indie developers that actually have done the work they are advertising.
The amount of time and research put into this topic could’ve been a lot more, and I would’ve gone further into this if I had the energy. However, this was made a lot quicker due to two characters on Steam. The first being Zaxtor99 TTV, whose review first alerted me to such a thing as an asset flip. I’d always suspected as such, but after playing Abscond and then being shown where it originally came from, I was gobsmacked that someone would actually do this. Secondly, to the person behind the curator calledSturgeon’s Law, Obey the Fist!, who almost had every link to all the assets that were stolen. I’ve also now read a whole Wikipedia article on “Asset-Flips” and an article/interview with Bennett Foddy and am a little asset-flipped out now.
Edit: I’ve been made vaguely aware that it’s somehow possible for developers to cheat the $100 entry fee for releasing a game on Steam by dropping more than one game at a time (or something). I’m not fully versed in this knowledge and can’t find any info on it at the moment. But it does, however, change a lot of the “predicted profit” if these “developers” managed to do this too, I, however, will probably look at this another time.
jinxlgamez
Doubtful Player 